Your data plan doesnt take into account advertisements which are basically subsidized at your expense. It doesnt count the silent data collection performed by most apps, or silent updates performed in the background. root your phone, install http://fdroid.org/ [fdroid.org] and download adaway to null-route advertising servers and reclaim some of your data plan

Well, you can only blame the market for not rejecting this stuff at the onset. People should send their phones back and demand they fix it or give their money back. It's going to take a lot of people, but hey, that's the nature of the beast. Otherwise, if they can't be bothered, there is no reason to blame the venders. Personally it's not an issue. Without unlimited mobile data, I turn it off and use wifi.

People should send their phones back and demand they fix it or give their money back

I wish! We could bring bad actors to heel very, very quickly if we were willing to boycott. But somehow, a whole bunch of people never get word, and a whole bunch more can't be bothered to participate even if they agree. It's really amazing how much people tolerate. Lots still buy gasoline from BP, still let Bank of America invent new charges to drain their bank accounts, still suffer Comcast's dreadful cable TV service. What does it take to drive those customers away?

Be careful that the "better caching" you see isn't actually pre-fetching, where the app downloads several of the next few links in the background so that if you click one, it loads much faster. Problem is, that counts against your data even if you never do click those links.

I've done a number of demos of what a site can do to you with pre-fetching. I make a page that shows viewers a few pictures, but also has "hidden" links that you don't see to other images, videos, etc. There are several ways of including such links without the browser actually showing them, which I won't waste time with here. I also include at least one link that's visible as an ordinarily link pointing to a large file that takes a while to download. After talking a while about other parts of the page,

Your data plan doesnt take into account advertisements which are basically subsidized at your expense. It doesnt count the silent data collection performed by most apps, or silent updates performed in the background.

Those updates offer you the option to defer them till Wifi.

More to the point, most geeks object vocally when carriers try to look at what you're doing. T-Mobile doesnt. They provide a pipe. What sites you visit, how big their ads are, and what apps you download-- none of that is their problem. If you use their pipe, they count the data.

Its worth noting though that they dont charge overages, you just lose LTE access when you cross your limit. Oh no, cry me a river. Maybe you want to look at deferring those updates till wifi, or quit watching youtube over LTE, or (gasp) upgrade your plan. T-Mobile's plan is so much better than any other carrier, its laughable, and here you are complaining that theyre not DPI'ing you to detect what the ads are.

Just in case it wasn't clear from the post above, you lose LTE/3G but still retain EDGE access. Email, light web browsing, maps, and the like still work fine on EDGE, just more slowly. I've rarely gone over, but only dropping my speed when I do is just about the best reaction to an overage that I've seen.

"More to the point, most geeks object vocally when carriers try to look at what you're doing. T-Mobile doesnt. They provide a pipe."

T-mobile's DNS server feeds you to THEIR custom add ridden 404 when there's no resolution, and by default ignores any DNS server you have set. I can't remember the exact details, but it takes a little brute force to make the device use the DNS you want. And if I remember correctly, it must be done with each and every address lease.

But they nickel and dime you for everything else. Even with their top plan where everything was supposedly included, a friend sent me text messages from his T-Mobile service, and I never got them. It turned out that for the privilege of sending or receiving SMS to or from other countries, you have to pay T-Mobile $10 extra per month, despite it not costing them anything extra, and even when the people in the other end are also on T-Mobile. Pure money grabbing.

I am not aware of this being true. I recently travelled through 3 countries in the mid east and asia, and had web and texting for free. The only thing that would have cost money was voice. This required no special plan or notification to T-Mobile.

I have one of those $30 T-mobile plans too, and none of the nickel-and-dime stuff you mention matters because I just use Google Voice / Hangouts VoIP so everything, including phone calls and SMS, counts as data.

The cool devs still do, though, because hardly anyone is making money on the Android markets.

Heh. I have a number of friends (acquaintances, colleagues, etc.) who are giving up on IOS, after numerous cases of their apps rejected by Apple, and then in many cases duplicated a month or two later by an Apple app. This tends to lead to a certain amount of what we might call cynicism about the whole process.

I like to remind them (or tell them, if they haven't read their history) that this has always been the story in "cottage industry". You do the work on your own time, and the employer then decides

Because on an iPhone, I can disable apps on a one by one basis from using cellular data, from using data in the background and don't have to worry about dozens of popular apps loading ads on my home screen.

Annoyingly, restricting background data isn't available when you select the "Android OS" "app", so the only way to really stop a (non rooted) Android phone to silently eat up your data plan is to completely disable cellular data. Whenever you need it, enable it - knowing that while you are using it, "Android OS" is doing its thing too.I miss how Symbian respected the fact that you were the one paying for the service, no hacking required.

T-Mobile Visual Voicemail used to work over the internets. But now you have to be on cellular data to use it. When T-Mobile made the change, they cited "security" as their reason. But even AT&T's VVM app works on unfriendly networks. Android includes ipsec, so if they really cared about security they could encrypt the VVM communications, but they don't. What they care about is money, and for prepaid customers, checking voicemail costs $1-3 depending on plan, since you pay for days on which you use your device.

The lie is that it has to be this way, which is what they will tell you if you complain. But it didn't used to be this way...

Not only does it give you great voicemail but you get the option of a second number on which you can filter and forward calls to your heart's content, plus free texting, and you can access it all from your computer, tablet, whatever. For the anti-Google crowd there are a number of other providers offering similar services, any VoIP provider is technically capable of doing it.

Carrier voicemail is a pile of crap across the board, I haven't used it since I got a smartphone.

I use Google Voice, and the voicemail feature is still useful, but they've already cut off 3rd party app usage which really gutted the use cases it was good for. I still use it, but I can't recommend it, because it might get shut off at any time. There is just no implied future to the service; it exists as long as it exists, because it doesn't make any money for them. Sad but true.

I would instead recommend that users who can afford it use a commercial IP telephony service with similar features.

Don't cry about this shit. Get your money back and buy a $30 Nokia, problem solved.

So just to be clear, the solution to the problem that visual voicemail doesn't work over the internet is to get a phone which doesn't have visual voicemail, and which always period the end full stop requires me to use the cellular network to check voicemail? Uh no

The one practical use I've found for voicemail is screening unfamiliar numbers. If I don't recognize the number and they don't leave a message, it was almost certainly not a call that was important or intended for me.

You've been modded off topic, and I probably will be, too, for agreeing with your post.

When I tried to read his list of lies, I gave up after the first sentence. I'm 62 years old and I don't see as well as I did back when I was Superman. A curse and a pox on web sites that use such low contrasting schemes. The article may have been interesting, but I'll never know what he intended to say because I simply can't read it without getting eyestrain and a massive headache.

Even increasing the font size in my browser can't compensate for low contrast. Using "Select All" makes for text that is a bit easier to read, but grows tiresome after a while because all the images have been selected, too.

A curse and a pox on web sites that use such low contrasting schemes. The article may have been interesting, but I'll never know what he intended to say because I simply can't read it without getting eyestrain and a massive headache.

I agree 150%! I will often close a web site nearly immediately if it has piss poor graphical design.
By the way, have you investigated if your browser has the option to turn off page styles? In Firefox selecting the View/Page Style/No Style menu option will turn off the crappy graphic decisions made by the web site author, if you really need to view the site.

If this is something that happens often, look into applying a user CSS like someone else mentioned or adjusting the font options in your browser. Most browsers will let you override the website's fonts with your own (though the OS default browsers like IE and Safari tend to put those options in the system settings).

Here are the ten lies they told me during the course of the more than hour long call:

1. The first two reps told me that there was never a bug affecting data usage. Eventually, the supervisor acknowledged that yes there had been (as I’d been told in January) but that it had been fixed.

2. They said maybe it was my fault – that I just didn’t realize how much data the iPhone 6 uses despite having had it on my account since September 2014 with four consecutive months under 3 GB.

3. They told me my phone had slowed because I’d already used my 3 GB plan data and 3.5GB of my 10 GB data stash (which activated at the end of January). But their website showed this was clearly not the case.

What the T-Mobile Website Showed

Perhaps he mistakenly was combining the plan data and data stash usage (3.45 GB) but he continued to repeat that it was 3.5 GB from my data stash. Still later, he told me I had used up 6.5 GB of my data stash.

4. Then, they told me their website usage data was up to 3 days behind. When I told them that the website was already including most all of the data from today (2/20), my call was at noon, he said it was up to 24 hrs behind.feb220

Data usage on 2/20 from T-Mobile Website during the call

Here’s what it says tonight:

5. Then, they told me that my entire data stash was gone because when I switched plans from Unlimited to 3 GB, I lost my data stash – ignoring my pleas that their January account tech had made the plan switch to fix the bug with billing in January.

6. They told me there might be a problem with my iPhone which they would help me troubleshoot. I told him I was hesitant to begin troubleshooting with someone who was quoting me statistics that didn’t reflect the reality shown on their website.

7. Then, the supervisor told me that perhaps I didn’t need to worry about this because the plan would reset tomorrow on the 21st because it’s a short month, not on the 26th as it always has. Here’s what the website showed:

Turn off mobile data and only use wifi. If everybody does that, you might see some changes. But as long as people keep buying these damn things faster than they can be made, nobody should complain about the success of the business model.

4. Then, they told me their website usage data was up to 3 days behind. When I told them that the website was already including most all of the data from today (2/20), my call was at noon, he said it was up to 24 hrs behind.feb220

I work with this data every day. It really *could* be up to 72 hours. Under particular conditions. If your phone does not hang up with GSM/CDMA you will not get the data usage until 24 hours have passed. At which point your carrier will hang up the phone and your phone will cal

Let's take it a bit farther, shall we? Assume all 10 are actually lies, they're not about the data plan, at all; they're about the data usage. I'm willing to bet that T-Mobile was completely up-front honest about the data plan, as their marketing materials are all pretty clearly written and it would take a complete idiot of a sales rep and a complete idiot of a customer to get those details wrong.

How about "Four Misinterpretations of My T-Mobile Data Usage, Repeated to Look Like Ten"?

He didn't call Apple users clueless, he called this Apple user clueless. Judging by the unreadable website, the fact that the lies were apparent misunderstandings, and were about data usage, not a data plan, I'd say he was spot on, and I don't think he made that assessment right off the bat, either; though it does appear that you made your assumption in that manner, without taking into account the evidence of cluelessness.

Obviously he should burn in hell for his color choices. There is no redemption possible. However, that doesn't mean that he was wrong about T-Mobile's lies. Most of the lies were indeed lies. The only misunderstanding I see is #10; he misunderstood what they mean by "quality."

You've clearly never been a T-Mobile customer using a new feature as they're in the process of rolling it out. Or, really, any other company doing the same. There's is a huge difference between a lie and a misunderstanding, in that a lie requires intent. It's fairly common for training, and even support systems, not to roll out until after the feature (backwards, in my opinion, but they do it so they can roll the features out faster); I would be willing to wager that this is exactly what happened here, havi

Exactly. I've had T-Mobile for years, use them internationally all over the world, and never once have I run into this, except in China when my nexus 4 decided to download a new version of Android, over and over and over.

This whole article translates to WAAAAHHHH!!!! I'm a whiner and I didn't get my way so I'm going to throw my mashed peas at the wall!

Grow up and quit whining. Sometimes you run out of your data allotment and all that happens is that TMobile throttles you down to a slower speed so you can't stream porn anymore.

I need to see a screenshot of his iPhone data usage tracking before I could take him seriously. Even if it is true that he never changed his usage pattern, he might have mistakenly installed an app that ate up his quota. If so, I think he owes T-Mobile a public apology.

I need to see a screenshot of his iPhone data usage tracking before I could take him seriously. Even if it is true that he never changed his usage pattern, he might have mistakenly installed an app that ate up his quota.

The images he shows prove that there are serious bugs in the T-Mobile data tracking. Different places in their software makes different claims about the usage, and their own support workers can't even make enough sense of it to read the usage off the screen accurately.

Since I'm not him, I really don't care what his usage was. But it harms everybody in the market, including people who use a different service, when a service is being dishonest. It distorts the market. And they clearly have bugs, and honestly

He can say anything about what the picture means as he wants. Some of his figures are pretty, but I'm pretty sure it's not a figure produced by the T-Mobile website. I'm a T-Mobile user, and their site only produces the usage over three billing cycles, Dec, Jan and Feb. I think his "Data Usage By Month Ending" figure is fabricated. The pink color is slightly different from the website's magenta color. Who is the dishonest one here?

Exactly. I've had T-Mobile for years, use them internationally all over the world, and never once have I run into this, except in China when my nexus 4 decided to download a new version of Android, over and over and over.

This whole article translates to WAAAAHHHH!!!! I'm a whiner and I didn't get my way so I'm going to throw my mashed peas at the wall!

Grow up and quit whining. Sometimes you run out of your data allotment and all that happens is that TMobile throttles you down to a slower speed so you can't stream porn anymore.

Much ado about absolutely nothing.

Ditto, however with such whining capabilities this sounds like a mileniall in which case its his parent's phone plan and he might get his allowance shortened =/

What bugs me with these data-counting plans is how they never have to prove to anyone that their numbers correlate to the real world.
If you sell apples by the lb you have to use a set of scales approved by the government. You have to show that it has been checked and correctly installed.
So, why does this not apply to bits and bytes?

So many users see odd calculations and billings from so many companies that one should think it was obvious by now this isn't fair...

People install so many apps, and give so many privileges to the apps. So many of them call home and upload connected data, also down load updates. So much of the data usage happens behind the scenes. In android at least there are settings to allow an app to connect to the internet only on wifi. These apps bitch moan and scream, "the app may not work right it it cant connect to the net all the time". But silence them anyway to get some handle on data usage. But even the apps you allow might suddenly downloa

So many users see odd calculations and billings from so many companies that one should think it was obvious by now this isn't fair...

This takes me back to the days of early usage based billing of internet in Australia. You basically had to go to online forums and do research to find out if your carrier was counting just downloads, downloads and uploads, counting traffic to servers they host, counting traffic to certain sites or only accessed certain ways (I'm looking at you mobile providers who said Facebook is free but only if you use it via the browser), or whether peer-to-peer traffic is counted within their network.

If you bill by the kWh it also applis to power and again your meter has to be approved.
If you bill by the cubic meter volume of gas it also applies to Gas and again has to be approved.https://www.gov.uk/uk-national... [www.gov.uk] (UK example.)

You see, you cannot sell a measured quantity without having some sort of proof that you are measuring an acceptable accuracy of said quantity. I

If I'm buying apples and they didn't have a certified scale, I can tell because there will be a sign that says, "sold by volume, all weights are approximate." This is one reason why roadside fruit stands often sell by the bag, basket, box, or flat, instead of by the pound.

When I buy or sell electricity or water, the meters have to be approved for that use by the state Public Utility Commission.

As an IT "expert" I have to inform you that it is you that are defending the rules being different in IT. The perso

I believe you are wrong here.
In your example you can actually watch the person, you can even videotape (or digitally ofcoruce) him/her.
But, in the case of your phone or pc, the supplier/isp refuses to tell us exactly how they count and what they count.

For example, phone service providers will often charge differently for a picture message than for data traffic. In which case they may or may not deduct the snooped message sent via IP from your data total and add a fixed number to the bill instead. On the

It also remains a bit frustrating to me that the carriers are allowed to bill you for data amounts without actually having to show you the URL endpoints related to each data packet.

Um, wot? First of all the endpoints are not URLs - presumably he doesn't know the difference between socket addresses and URLs.

But to present a list of each data packet? I don't think this guy has any idea at all of how networking works. Even if his phone operated with an X.25 1500 byte packet size and everything he sent or received were even multiples of that, a 3 GB usage would then mean at least two million lines listing endpoints. In real life usage, much more.

WTF. We have one person's bad experience with a phone carrier as "news". If we're just going to start publishing individual complaints the entire site will be filled with rants about Verizon and AT&T, that's without even starting on Comcast and Time Warner.

I find this article funny because my experience with T-Mobile has been completely different.

I'll admit, I only consider them good because the competition is so bad (and I've had a number of cell carriers), but so far I'm very happy with them:

I get an unlimited data plan for the cost of a limited data plan on Verizon

I get LTE in all major metro areas, and it's FAST

Unlimited really seems to be unlimited. I abuse it (streaming movies for instance) and haven't once seen a slow down. And I check periodically with a speed test app

Due to a large european network, roaming abroad can be cheaper than other carriers

While other carriers like Verizon and AT&T have a lot of bad press for tracking of users / selling users data, there's been none from T-Mobile. A cynical person might say this is because they're just better at it, but I feel it's important to reward companies who do the right thing.

The only complaint I have is they disable the personal hotspot on my phone after 5 GB of usage each month. After that I have to pay.

In short: they might not have everything I want, but they are awesome compared to everyone else out there.

Call them up and tell them that. It may take little while or a few calls to get anywhere, but I've found that they actually respond to complaints about dead zones in their metro service areas.

If it's just a little gap in a place with otherwise good signal, they'll make back the cost of installing a little repeater on a street light in a few months of gaining a new customer. Of course, if there's no signal for miles, they're not going to put up a new tower for you.

T-mobile plans do not have contracts. One can leave the network anytime. So there is no real hold over the customers. If they have bought a phone on installment plan, you have to pay off the remainder, but otherwise no real hold. So typically t-mobile customer service is very nice.

I have this issue of Rogers Wireless connecting to my phone across the Niagara River and charge me roaming. For some reason T-mobile is not able to stop it. May be they are owned by the same company or what not. So every time I go to Niagara Falls I can expect roaming charges. They have always been prompt in reversing the charges. It is typically 5$ to 15$. Just call, "say I have never been over the border" and the rep would reverse the chargers.

Looks like the poster got some great publicity due to the earlier post about 750$ a minute roaming charge from AT&T. I think it is possible he was very diligent in checking the usage and fees and managed to get the under paid and uninformed phone reps to say things that he managed leverage into another highly visible "10 lies from T-mobile".

Also T-mobile does not have over usage charges. It just throttles the connection speed. Even the throttled speed is 128 kbps which is good enough for google maps turn by turn navigation.

I usually side with the small guy against the corporation all the time. Now I wonder if I am being gamed by this poster.

It was off. Still T-Mobile USA used to connect to Rogers Wireless Canada. They know the issue and reverse the charges. Recently I turned international roaming back on, It is just 25 cents a minute even from India. I have not been to Niagara recently. But, if I do, and if they charge me 25 cents a min, I might let it slide. It is 2$ a minute that ticks me off. 25cents a minute, total of 1$ or 2$, I might not bother to fight them for it.

If one person's personal bad experience with T-Mobile is news, than perhaps it's newsworthy that I use T-Mobile and am completely happy with it. Recently I switched to the two lines unlimited data with Hotspot for $100, it's great. My wife and I use a lot of data and there's no throttling or any problems at all, and the hotspot works well (we both have problems with internet sometimes not being available at work).

It works great in other countries, it's free to use data in Mexico (but with 3g) and in Asia (or anywhere, really) you could call people over wifi just like a normal phone.

The only problem is that reception in hilly forest areas of the Bay Area is sometimes spotty, often with no data. AT&T is better at that.

If one person's bad experience with T-Mobile is news, it must just be that rare for someone to have an experience with them that's actually bad enough to complain about.

I've had a few, but they've always been related to new plans or features that they were still in the midst of rolling out, T-Mobile always ends up coming through with a solution (even if it does take time), and the issues always seem to smooth out once a feature or plan has been fully rolled out and staff has been trained.

they have the most amazing thing going on there. £15 a month and you get so many minutes and so many texts, but the selling point is this, and this is right off the T&C page:

"When we say all you can eat, that's what we mean. We do have a hard cap for domestic and pay as you go customers, but it's a cap you're unlikely to hit even if you saturate your connection 24/7 for a month."

That connection is a 7MBit 3G cellular, and the cap is 1000GB. You CAN hit 1000GB a month but only if you can clear 34GB a DAY. That's a 100% wall-to-wall saturation of your connection with NO interruptions.

I've been on this plan for several years now and NEVER ONCE have I managed to hit the cap. And I'm a heavy tethered torrenter.

Three haven't always been that good - a good few years ago (2009?), I was on an 'unlimited' data package with them, few months in to the contract I received a text citing changes they had made, my unlimited data was now limited to 500MB under "fair usage". I could not fucking believe it. It was in one of my parents name at the time, they kicked up a fuss for me but didn't get very far.

I think I'm one of the lucky ones. My mother has had nothing but connectivity problems (iPhone, hah! Solved with the purchase of a Nokia Lumia 630) and later bandwidth problems (suburban with the nearest tower too far away for HSDPA, she was stuck at 3MBit on a good day, wouldn't even stream Youtube on an average day), there's me in the convergence zone of no less than three towers now.

I don't. I'm totally honest with them. Told them when the floor fell out of my signal one day that it might have been something I did, they were straight back and telling me that their relay had actually burned out - yes it was me caused it, but I wasn't to know and neither were they that three days of solid saturation on a HSDPA connection would kill their hardware (though it had happened elsewhere). Within an hour a new mobile tower was up and I was back online. The CSM's exact words to me: "you paid for

I would switch to one of the many other data providers. If you don't like T-mo, then go with Consumer Cellular, Virgin Mobile, or one of the many quality providers who give you honest data service for an honest dollar.

Certainly, we do not need Government regulations. The free market is auto-correcting here.

The virtue is that when I tell these people that the call was recorded... they suddenly get more cooperative. Its actually pretty awesome. I don't even need to play the recording to them to prove my point. I just tell them that I had a previous conversation with them, tell them what that was, and then tell them I recorded it. Which I did... but not one of them has asked to listen to it. They just submit.

I've gotten a lot of refunds and credits on my account that way.

Try it. First, get one of the apps for your phone that records calls... enable it... make your calls... and then when they start feeding you double talk... you tell them that the calls were recorded. They'll just give you whatever you're owed in most cases.

I'm a fairly satisfied T-Mobile customer, but one thing I've found with them consistently is ANY time they offer a new feature, service plan or offer - the customer service folks are untrained on it for months and the handling of it is very inconsistent.

I'm actually on wi-fi often enough so I never use that much LTE data in a month. For me, the "data stash" offer wasn't worth paying for a more expensive plan to get it. But yes, it would follow the trend I've seen with T-Mobile for them to have bugs in tracking it properly, phone reps who don't understand how their own web site works with regards to it, etc.

When they first started offering those "pay only x$ down and make interest free payments over 24 months for your new device" offers, they were all mixed up too. People were going in or buying online and getting wildly different results as to how much money (if any) had to be put down for the initial purchase. (Eventually, they seemed to iron that out, with some kind of internal credit score based system that still keeps you guessing a bit until you get final word -- but is fairly consistent.) When my workplace signed on so employees buying T-Mobile for personal devices could qualify for a corporate discount, they had that all mixed up too. The retail T-Mobile stores couldn't tell me if I'd get the discount or not when adding a new iPad to a data plan, etc.

I've just learned with T-Mobile to "go with the flow" basically. Pay your bill on time and if they hype up anything new that involves a plan change -- give it 2-3 months before you do it for the least amount of hassle and confusion. All in all, they've saved me a lot of money over using AT&T or Verizon, and gave me better phone handset options and more "extras" than Sprint ever did. They just rolled out LTE service in my town too, which I've been waiting and hoping for, for about a year now. (I mainly use my LTE data at work or on the commute, so it hasn't been a really big issue... but it's nice to finally have the same level of service at home.)

This perfectly mirrors my experience. They always eventually sort it out, you just have to be patient and try not to scream at the phone reps; understand that most of them actually do want to help, but they're hamstrung by a back-end system that wasn't designed for the number of users it currently has.

I have the unlimited plan which gives me unlimited data use for data that never leaves the phone (ie for data that isn't sent to a tethered computer).

But the hackers who mess with the settings in rooted phones say that it isn't that you're charged for data as it goes out the wifi, it's that when you turn on tethering, the phone connects to a different APN.

So actually I have a limited amount of data usage while tethering is on, whether the data leaves the phone or not.

I was on T-Mo's $30/mo Unlimited text & data + 100 Voice minutes plan. If I used up the 100 voice minutes, and I regularly would by a phone call or two, additional minutes would cost $0.10/min so I kept 20 bucks in the account just for insurance. Yet... ever time I went over 100 minutes I was cut off from voice. In some cases data was cut off too. My buffer never kicked in. I would end up having to renew early or at least manually. Auto-renew did not work. This went on for nearly a year before I got sick of it.

So then I looked at my data usage (on the T-mo website) and it was always un 5 GB/month. Well under. So I decided to switch to the $30/month unlimited Voice + 5GB data plan. This should work... but it didn't. My data was cut off after two weeks. I had somehow exceeded my limit even though I NEVER had before. And guess what? Under this plan they don't let you see your stats. You can't even see how much data you've used when you log into your account.

So I gave up on the bargain basement plans and went for the 40/mo unlimited voice/5GB data w/throttle instead of cut off. I consoled myself by thinking that I'd at least have unlimited music streaming & international data but... NO. That only kicks in at the 50/mo level. Found that out the hard way.

So now I'm paying for $50/month unlimited talk/text/data (only 1GB at 4g) plan, mostly for the privilege of no monthly billing hassle. This is really only slightly cheaper than Sprint, last I looked. I am abusing the free music streaming though and I have two international trips planed where I intend to use data.

It's still not a bad deal but my take away is this.... T-mobile will still nickle & dime you to death as well as the others and their low end plans aren't worth it unless you are patient and diligent. I'm also pretty sure they are playing games with your data stats.

Anyone saying that they are completely ripping you off (and OP especially) is full of crap. Not the best service when out of country but it really isn't that bad...you simply feel like they are trying to take you for a bit of a ride...nothing you should be surprised of when dealing with an American company.

Now it's a finance agreement, which is totally not the same thing as a contract!

No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done. Or I can buy any GSM phone that supports the bands that T-mobile uses and have no commitment.

No it's not the same as the traditional cell phone contract. With the traditional cell phone contract, whether I buy an $800 iPhone or a $100 cheap Android phone, I would still owe the same termination fee. With t-mobile, I pay the cost of the phone and I'm done.

Then you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. Here's T-Mobile's old terms:

$200 if termination occurs with more than 180 days remaining on your term; $100 if termination occurs with 91 to 180 days remaining on your term; $50 if termination occurs with 31 to 90 days remaining on your term; and the lesser of $50 or your monthly recurring charges (including any applicable taxes and fees) if termination occurs in the last 30 days of your term.

Unless you were signing a contract for a dumbphone or an entry-level low-end smartphone, you generally came out financially ahead over paying full retail price for a flagship handset, even if you left the carrier immediately after signing up.

What if you actually wanted a cheap phone? Well, here's the kicker - T-Mobile always allowed you to establish month-to-month service if you brought your own phone (or purchased one outright). Al

It goes beyond that, even. With a traditional cell phone contract, your bill doesn't change once you pay off the phone, because you never actually pay off the phone, because you aren't financing it; instead, the plan price is increased to subsidize the phone price, so you actually keep paying for the phone, even after it's been paid for several times over. With the finance agreement, once you pay off the phone, you stop paying for the phone.

Which doesn't apply here. When I first switched to T-Moble, I was paying less while financing 2 phones for unlimited everything (including unlimited LTE data), than I was paying AT&T for 700 shared minutes and 4GB of data per line. $50/mo, to be precise, or $1200 over 2 years. Plus the $100 paid to AT&T for my phone and $200 for my wife's, bringing the 2 year total AT&T ripoff to $1500. Now that both phones are paid for, the bill is an additional $50/mo lower; mind you, we paid $650 apiece for t

Oh, oops. Looks like they now have a family plan that includes 2 lines and unlimited LTE data for $100/mo now. That's $20/mo less than I've been paying, so I just switched to it. That puts T-Mobile unlimited everything and Cricket with a 20GB/line data cap at the same price after taxes and fees, if you've got 2 lines.

Damn. Sorry about that, Cricket looked like it may have been a viable option for some people, but... well. Just... sorry. And thanks for prompting me to look into that; it's new since I looke

And, like I said, to each his own. If Cricket works for you, than great. I even said as much and I'm not ripping on Cricket or trying to tear them down in any way. You, on the other hand, apparently understand the market better than your initial misleading response to me seems to indicate, leading me to believe that was your intent. Thus why I clarified things.

You want unlimited data without throttling? They offer it for $30/mo. Otherwise, they don't cut off your data or charge you extra, so yes, it is unlimited usage, even if a portion of it is limited bandwidth.